Times
by those-painted-wings
Summary: The sum of a person's character is often determined by a series of events that would seem all but unrelated. With closer observation, they may be linked, but it is a rare person that understands themselves, and an even rarer one that may understand another.
1. One of Five

AN:This is a Kirk-centric anthology of fifteen parts, following the course of his life but containing _no scenes from the movie_. They are written as both character studies and for practice with presenting associated but separate storylines. They are not in chronological order - it not being necessary for the unity of the whole. I am particularly proud of some of these, but that doesn't mean constructive criticism isn't welcome - at your discretion, of course.

Five Times He Thought About Death (One of Five)

George said he was a smart kid, and George was never wrong. And as a child of said intelligence, he had always been aware of the hole in their little family: the space to which his mother turned and found nothing.

One day George sat him down and said, "I need to tell you about our father," he straightened up and paid attention, because knowing George Kirk Senior was gone was different from knowing how or why or where. Knowing he was gone was merely a fact, but Mom had never even admitted to even that much, so there was nothing more – not even a clue – to speculate or draw conclusions from. Jimmy had abstained from doing so, because even as a six year old he knew how painful it was to hope or dream something that probably wasn't true and had little possibility of becoming so. He didn't have much of a taste for fantasy.

So when George told him, with a choking in his voice that made Jimmy want to hug him, that their father was dead, it wasn't shocking – but that didn't make it pleasant. "How?" Jim asked, the question he had wanted to ask since his fourth birthday, when his mother had taken one look at the overlarge Starfleet pin clipped to his shirtfront – one his brother had given him – and burst into noisy tears. He had taken the pin off and held it out to her, but she dashed it out of his hand and ran from the room. It fell to the floor with a a clatter of tempered metal, and when he picked it up and cradled it in his chubby toddler hand, the taller prong of the sweeping arc was bent over the command star, as if to hide some associated shame.

He was a hero, according to Georgie, but the words Jim heard every time George sniffled were, "He promised to come back."

His father was dead, but he had promised to come back. He had turned his ship and flown directly into their attacker and saved many lives, but he was still dead. Had it been worth it? A life and a broken promise for the crew of an entire ship? Starfleet had thought so, and George, Jimmy thought, believed so. But his mother still mourned and flinched when Jimmy smiled. IF there was one thing Jimmy knew without being told now, it was that his mother would have preferred that both she and her unborn child had died with her husband.

He had read once, in an old glue-and-paper book found in the attic, the words, "Do not pity the dead. Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love."

Captain George Kirk, deceased – didn't need pity.

(Quote from _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, _American hardcover version, page 722)


	2. One of Two

Two Times He Tripped on the Stairs (One of Two)

He was supposed to be sitting in Xenobiological Studies 103 right now, but there was a substitute today and he thought it a better use of his time to simply roam the corridors. With everyone in their lectures, the enormous complex was echoing and empty, and carried that calm, controlled feeling he had come to associate with libraries and commuter shuttles – the feeling of people acting in perfect respect to one another.

Which wasn't something he generally concerned himself with. Pike said that was something he needed to work on, but Jim was ahving trouble. Years of self-sufficiency had also taught him selfishness, and considering what others might want or need or feel just didn't come naturally to him, anymore.

He had been remarkably in tune to his mother. It had been painful, for she was often in pain, of which he was commonly the source. The only solution he had found was to go away, which rendered both her emotions and his sensitivity to them null. Then she had left for good – his fault, no doubt, with his face growing more like his father's every day. With a new boyfriend and George sufficiently matured to look after him, she hadn't felt the need to look after him overpowered her own feelings on the matter, and gone back to the stars.

Now here he was, in the halls of Starfleet Academy, with no real idea what he was doing. No real skills for leadership, with the only people to have any concern for his future his middle-aged sadistic doctor roommate and an old friend of his father, whose motivations probably had more to do with that fact than any of Jim's own, admittedly lacking, virtues.

Still, here was better than where he had been, getting drunk and wasted all over Riverside. Pike had said his potential was being wasted, and maybe it was, because he had never seen anything come from it. And here he was passing all his classes and simulations – it felt like something was being accomplished, even though he didn't know what it was leading to – and he wasn't going to allow himself to lose what he had found.

He had let himself lose George – had run after him, yes, but never looked for him again. George had needed to get away, and Jim had let him. That, he realized, was the last time he had acted entirely selflessly. After that, it had been survive, and for a time, to enjoy himself as much as possible as he did so. Here, he had purpose.

His feet had quietly followed his habit as he thought, guiding themselves across the park to the front entrance of the great library. Before it, seven broad steps reached out to embrace the brick walk, their edges expanding in a graceful arc of white marble. It was an old building, well-appointed, well-used. He had been here many times, but today, his mind preoccupied with thoughts of what had been and would be, his foot caught on the lip of the third step and he stumbled.

With a yelp he was glad no one was around to hear, he startled out of his contemplation and caught himself. His arms flailed wildly, messenger bag full of padds threatening to overbalance him – and then steadied, and went on.


	3. Two of Five

Five Times He Thought About Death (Two of Five)

_He was distracted by the whimpering and thumping of the agonized creature behind them and glanced back at it yet again._

"_Are you sure we can't do anything?"_

"_There is no help possible."_

The battered copy of _Deathly Hallows –_ dust jacket missing, corners battered into shreds of gray paper – fell into his lap as he looked up at the noise, eyes flying to the window where he caught just a flash of confused wings as the bird fell to the ground. Without a thought he dashed outside, screen door banging behind him as he tumbled down the steps, coming to kneel in the dirt below the living room window.

The bird was stunned by its collision with the window, but its head twitched feebly as Jimmy loomed over it. Doing his best not to frighten it further, he gathered it into his hands where it lay on its belly, wings drooping over the sides of his left hand. He could feel its heart beating wildly, fluttering against his palm in a desperate attempt to keep the body alive. The bird gasped, beak gaping widely, but no sound issued. Jimmy stroked a single finger down its back, and it relaxed a little. He felt its heart slow, and entertained hopes of saving it – and then the pulse stuttered, and stopped.

He gaped at it, falling back so that his butt rested on the heels of his shoes, the soles of which were peeling away from the uppers with use. He poked the still brown body, and it slumped to the side. One dimming eye stared up at him from among the fine yellow-brown feathers of its face. Gone was the crescent arc of reflected light, the spark of life and energy that would have marked the eyes of a living bird. It was replaced by flat beady blackness, like the dark pupils of the dead prawns on ice in the supermarket.

He had seen dead animals before – roadkill, a pigeon floating in the fountain in front of the Town Hall – but this was the first time he had watched something die, seen and felt its life fade away. He ran another finger down the silver-gray back. It was already cool and stiffening in the October air.

It had been alive and now it wasn't. He shrugged and laid the bird down on the hard earth, going to fetch a trowel. Mom had tried gardening last spring, and given it up within a month, but the tools remained along with a few straggling perennials. The trowel was at the bottom of the hall closet, buried under several layers of shoes. He pulled it out by the tip of the blade and grasped it properly by the handle, admiring the way the sunlight through the still-open door glinted and pooled along its length.

The hole he dug was small but deep. If it were shallow, the stray cats and other wild animals would dig it up, and while Jimmy held nothing against them for taking a meal where it was available, he wanted this body to rot in peace. Before the laid it in the earth, he dislodged the primary feathers with two sharp tugs, tucking them in his jeans pocket. The heads of a few brave marigolds drooped over the disturbed earth when he was done, and he considered breaking a few off and putting them in a jar for his mother to find when she got home from her "family outing" with Georgie... but knowing her, she wouldn't even notice.

He sighed and tapped the blooms so that they bobbed and wept yellow-gold petals over the grave, then stood. He tried to brush the dirt from the legs of his pants, but it had engrained itself into the fabric to the point that it probably wouldn't even come out in the wash. There was dirt on his shirt, too, where he had wiped his hands. Mom would not be pleased.

Instead of going straight back to his book, he fired up their ancient console and called up the encyclopaedic archives.

_The Mourning Dove_, it read, _(Zenaida macroura) is a member of the Dove family (Colombidae). It is one of the most abundant and widespread..._

He shut off the console and pulled open the drawer under the desk, from which he pulled a twist of brown string and a tube of superglue. From his pocket he produced the two dark feathers. He tied a knot around the blunt ends, adding a drop of superglue as insurance. The ends of the string he knotted together, then pulled the simple necklet over his head and tucked it under his shirt so that the smooth feathers tickled over his breastbone.

(Quote from _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows_, American hardcover version, page 709)


	4. One of Four

Four Times He Almost Died (One of Four)

The sun was hot, and above the water he could practically feel each individual photon beating down on his tanned skin. They were at the community pool, all three of them, since the lifeguard wouldn't let anyone in without an adult. His mother lounged on a towel spread across the pooldeck under an umbrella. Her cheap hardcopy romance novel of the week helped shield her eyes from the sun's reflection off the water. She always said that she used hardcopies because padds would be ruined from the splashes, but Jim privately thought it was because she, like himself, preferred the textured slide of paper over her fingers and the warm comfortable smell of ink and glue. She would have been in a pool chair, but they were all taken – everyone in Riverside, it seemed, had come to swim today.

George was off in the deep end with his friends. They roughhoused and held one another under the water, attracting the attention and vigilance of both attending lifeguards. Jim knew that the older boys probably wouldn't object to his joining them, but today he didn't feel like keeping up with a bunch of hyperactive middle schoolers. He had tucked himself into a curve in the pool's shape and now slipped under the clear water, eyes blinking open to watch the sun play in curls and circles around the ripples of people's movements. The dull thudding thesona that most sounds took on underwater made an almost-rhythm in his ears, and he smiled around the air he held in his mouth.

Beyond the layered and tumultous meniscus of water the sun made a bright orb, its power reduced to little more than a lightbulb by distance and cold chlorinated water. He knew he would have to come up soon and expose himself to its full fury. But he hated to yield to the simple instinctive demands of his body – if he couldn't control himself, what right did he have to control anything? - so he stayed underwater, testing his limits.

A shadow covered the sun, growing bigger in an instant, and a body crashed into the water just over him. It was George, Jim thought. George grabbed him by the shoulders, grinning mischievously, and pushed him down to pin him against the bottom of the pool, as he had been doing with his friends. Jim, taken by surprise and badly needing air, gasped.

Afterwards, he wouldn't be able to describe the feeling of water rushing into his lungs. Afterwards, his throat and chest would be burning and he would be wheezing and his mother would be weeping. But in the moment it happened, it was almost beautiful – though every instinct rebelled. It was cold and fluid, of course, but also almost like air, though heavy and slick and... like death, really.

When he breathed in, George's expression went from teasing to terrified in an instant. Jim remembered, very clearly, the widening of his brother's eyes and the desperate shove he gave the ground to bring them both to the surface. After that, all was confusion. Someone was thumping on his chest, and he was coughing endlessly...

And burned onto his retinas were twin golden circles, as if he had looked into a bright, white light. It might have been merely the sun.


	5. One of Three

Three Times a Moment Lasted Forever (One of Three)

"Wait a moment. How many extracurriculars are you involved in, exactly?"

He had to think about it for a moment, which was probably a bad sign. There was the chess, club, of course, though joining it had been an accident. He had never regarded himself as a chess sort of person, it being a game reputed for thoughtfulness and long-term strategy, though he had made a point of learning the rules to please his Aunt, who seemed the think you weren't a well-educated young man until you knew how to play.

Jim had been looking for a convenient and undisturbed place to study – an abandoned office or lecture hall, or even a nice deep windowsill – opening doors at random and disturbing various students who had had the same idea. None of the rooms had suited him yet, and he was considering giving up and dragging Bones out to the bar. But first he pushed open one last door, vaguely recalling this as leading to a generally neglected rec room. For once, it was full of people. He turned around, taking it as a sign from above that no studying should be attempted today, but paused in the doorway as he realized how silent they all were. No large group of people was ever that quiet.

He turned around again and walked into the room. About three dozen people were clustered around four table, which proved to be supporting a chess board each. Jim watched with bemusement as the observers around the third table leaned forward in unison to watch some, apparently key, move by a blonde upperclassman. His opponent let out an explosive breath of air, leaned forward, and tipped over his king. It seemed the group would disperse, and Jim turned again to leave, when someone tapped him on the shoulder.

"'Dju like to play?"

Before he even fully realized what he was agreeing to, he said yes.

"But," he hastened to add, "I'm not much good."

"Then it'll at least be over quick, huh?" His challenger's alien face grinned at him, bluish. Maybe half-Andorian, he thought.

He settled down, preparing himself to be ignominously defeated.

And then he won. Spectacularly.

"Thought you said you weren't any good. Man, I'm getting my ass whupped. Hey, Connor! Try this guy on for size!"

Jim beat 'Connor' too. And every other member of the club, over the next three months. They didn't understand it; he didn't understand it. There was something about his style of play that dissuaded older players from strategies and overwhelmed new ones. When they made him president, he didn't refuse.

Then there was the flight club, and the Flight Combat classes, and the cadets he was teaching how to cheat at poker...

There were his combat students, too. In his second year, he had gotten into a little tumble outside Bad Wolf Bar, and a senior had picked him up after, dusted him off, and declared, "If that's how you fight drunk, I'd love to see you sober."

Two weeks later, Jim found himself being groomed as the Senior's replacement to lead Hand-to-Hand. By the end of the year, he was involved with the firearms section too.

He also tutored a couple girls in Andorian, on and off... and those whiz math kids sometimes asked his advice...

He had taken too long to answer Bones' question, but it had been rhetorical anyway. So instead, he admitted what Bones wanted to hear and needed him to say.

"I do a lot. Maybe too much. But if I didn't, then who would?"

Bones' disapproval tangibly radiated off him, and Jim basked in it, because Bones cared. Why else would he bark at Jim for working too hard, or make him carry that anti-allergy hypo that saved his life once, or hypo him into sleep at a reasonable hour every once in a while?

But this time, his frankness had blunted Bones' tirade, and the harried doctor merely smiled tiredly.

"Alright, Jim. But you better be in bed by ten tonight."

"Yes, Mom," agreed Jim impishly.

Bones clocked him one over the back of the head – but gently.


	6. Two of Four

Four Times He Almost Died (Two of Four)

It was stupid and embarrassing and absolutely terrifying, not that he would ever admit it. But everyone who cared enough to provide more than horrified sympathy probably already knew, it was this event that shocked him into sense regarding his own appalling weakness.

His allergies were unpredictable. Bones could quote premature birth and subspace radiation all he wanted, but Jim knew he was a freak of nature. Usually, he only reacted to bees, mushrooms and whatever hypo the doctors stuck him with to try and cure the former, but on that day he had been unlucky enough to find a new catalyst.

It wasn't a food or an animal. It wasn't something he would likely ever come in contact with again. It certainly wasn't something anyone had been recorded as having reacted to before. It was a rock. From Kappa V, according to the lab rat who then proceeded to tap it with a ball peen hammer - "To test its resonances."

It exploded. Into powder, most of which fell passively to sit in a grayish-green pile on the lab table. Jim opened his mouth to chew out Lab Rat and breathed in the few grains that had decided not to act as if the table had the gravitational mass of a large star.

Lab Rat (whose name might be Kemmer, but right now Jim was favoring Lab Rat) started babbling about interesting and unforeseen reactions. Jim was too busy coughing to tell him how much of an idiot he was, conducting experiments in uncontained environments and getting excited about unhypothesized results. Both he and Lab Rat began to get worried when the coughing didn't stop.

He couldn't seem to get enough air into his lungs. His tongue felt thick and heavy, and his vision was graying out. His thoughts flashed unpleasantly.

_Burned onto his retinas were twin golden circles_

*~BREAK~*

"_Jim, are you listening to me?" A hand reached up and grasped his chin, wrenching his head around to focus on Bones rather than the hot girl whose legs flashed enticingly as she strode past their half-basement window. "Pay attention now! This might save your life! Knowing you, you'll go into anaphylactic shock sometime I'm not around, and there'll be no one competent enough to help you!"_

_Reluctantly, he focused._

"_This," exclaimed Bones, brandishing one of his dreadful instruments before Jim's face, "is a hypo. Inside this hypo," he turned it on its side to expose the label, "is one dose of the only antihistamine you aren't allergic to. An expensive one at that, so don't lose it! To use, place pointy end here," he poked Jim in the side of the neck, "and squeeze. Then call me. Failing that – God forbid – call a doctor. Failing _that, _knowing you, get hold of anyone with basic medical training and hope they know what they're doing."_

_To conclude, he snarled "Think you can remember all that?"_

*~BREAK~*

"In the bag," he gasped. "A hypo."

Kemmer scrambled for his messenger bag and pawed through the pockets. Jim could hear his fingers fumbling in his haste before he finally grasped the slim body of the hypo. Kemmer retained enough sense to jab it into Jim's neck, and though the sting was painful, it drew him out of the gray haze his mind had been slipping into. He gasped, drawing in more air already as the hypo began its work.

"Call Bones," he managed. "Comm's... in pocket," and passed out.

*~BREAK~*

"Do you know how close you came to dying, you selfish ass?"

"Thanks, Bones," was his sleepy answer.

Bones spluttered. "For what?"

"I remembered the hypo."


End file.
